With the recent sex scandal the Roman Catholic church is facing, it is a clear issue of a communication breakdown within the church itself of not defining its stand per se in handling pedophile bishops and priests within its hierarchy.
More sexual abuse victims have come forward to expose the three bishops for pedophilia with the pope meeting the victims.
There’s now a significant change with Pope Benedict XVI at the helms of the church compared to his predecessor John Paul II who has done little.
It has now opposed to the traditional idea of protecting bishops and priests and instead calling for transparency and accountability for the misdeeds committed by the members of the church.
It has now clearly defined the church stand and addressing the general public’s concern who calls for accountability to those people of the church responsible for the crime.
“The church realizes that it doesn’t have a way out, not until it confronts the entirety of its problems,” said Albert Melloni, the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna, Italy.
The issue now according to Mr. Melloni is whether the Vatican will stick to its old explanation that pedophilia is the result of sexual revolution that they had always fought or whether it will confront the failure in the church leadership that permitted sexual abuses to go unpunished.
Whatever it is, it is now high time that the church culture of non transparency should be scrapped and it has to opt for public disclosure and full cooperation with the civil authorities in the conduct of investigation for criminal liability to the erring members of the church.
As a welcome development, the Vatican has affirmed that bishops and priests should follow civil laws in countries require reporting of pedophilia and other abuses to the authorities.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his pastoral letter dated March 20, has said that secularism and “misguided” interpretations of the reforms of the liberalizing Second Vatican Council contribute to the context of the abuse.
However, he also downgraded “a tendency in society to favor the clergy and other authority figures; and a misplaced concern of the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal.”